It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.

Bench press 260 lbs. x 2 sets x 6, 2 sets x 5 - was supposed to hit 260x4x6, but triceps gave out. My endurance is really shitty, on the first 2 sets I felt like I could do 10 reps with the weight and then crapped out by set 3.

Seated front military press - worked up to 205x2, then 215 x 1, 225 x 1 and 235 x 1, the latter 2 being PRs. 245 lbs. didn't come up, but I'm still pretty stoked (especially after all the bench pressing).

Then did some hanging off a bar to stretch my back and some Bulgarian split squats with no weight. I’m surprisingly weak at this movement and need to do it more. I also need to stretch and rest my lower back this week: I did some foam rolling over the weekend and found all sorts of horrible knots in it.

Debated whether I should go for 365 or 370 on the last attempt. 315 felt like 215, so I decided to be ambitious. My form was shitty and I raised my ass off the bench toward the end of the lift, but I'll take it. I'm pretty stoked about hitting 370 this early in the year; this was my target weight for 2012, so I might add a pound or two to it by year-end. Still over 5 months to go.

I'm starting a new deadlift program, a bastardization of Brad Gillingham's pull template that I got from the lift-run-bang. com website. It alternates pulling from different heights in the power rack for max singles with 5-rep sets of stiff-leg deadlifts, then back to the floor building up to a max single. The entire program takes 24 weeks and I'm hoping it'll finally put me over the 500 lbs. mark. My deadlift has sucked long enough - I'm determined to make it at least mediocre this year.

First day - pull from below knee

I thought this would be easier than pulling from mid-shin. Turns out I'm even weaker at this point than from the middle. I've hit 600 from less than two inches higher (above knee), but I can't even pull my full-ROM max from just below the knee. Lots of work ahead...